ByKristin Rawls, Monitor contributorNovember 5, 2012

Economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has written a politically moderate book that contests the current excesses of American capitalism and explains how the United States came to experience such escalating inequality in the first place. Stiglitz has made a career of explaining complex economic principles to general audiences, and this accessible book is as helpful and accessible as its predecessors. Stiglitz finds the US in an unenviable position with an economy that isn’t working for many of its citizens. Stiglitz doesn’t think the current state of affairs is inevitable, and he argues persuasively that better regulated markets and more restrictions on money in politics would go a long way toward stemming escalating inequality.